I am about to undertake building the most data intensive wordpress site I have ever attempted. I am having trouble wrapping my head around the best way to structure the categories/subcategories and was hoping someone with a bigger brain could make a good suggestion. It will be a business directory covering all 50 states in the US and also be categorized by business type. I would like to make the site easy to search so that things don't get buried as well. Folks should be able to search by state and business type, possibly even city. So far I know I need 50 States as categories as well as 15-20 business types such as auto dealers, dentists, restaurants, bars, etc... I was considering breaking it down by region as well: Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, Midwest, etc.. Just cannot decide how to most efficiently lay this out without making a big mess. For example: Parent Category: Northeast Child Category: NY Grandchildren Categories: auto dealers, dentists, restaurants, bars This looks ok but it would mean I would have to make new child/grandchild categories for each state. The reason for using the regions as top level categories is just to make it so that all 50 states don't come out of one drop down menu! It may be better to just have 50 states as top level categories, followed by 15-20 Business Types as top level categories. I also considered basing everything on tags, but that hurt my brain even more. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. The goal is to create the best user experience possible of course. This is way beyond the typical restaurant/band/hair salon websites I've done though. Thanks for reading...!L
How about building the using custom taxonomies, that way you would be able to group things together (in a better way). http://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies
Thanks man, just actually finished reading about post types and taxonomies. 2 things I have never used in Wordpress! (or avoided using because I am lazy) I am considering building this way with post types and taxonomies: Post Type - California Taxonomies - Bar, Cafe, Auto Dealer, Salon, etc... Post Type - New York Taxonomies - Bar, Cafe, Auto Dealer, Salon, etc... Through all 50 states. However, I am still unsure how this would work out in with regard to searching the website. By default, the wordpress search stinks. Users would need a way to search for say a Pet Store in Ohio. Not sure how that will end up working out. So my brain is still in pain from this.